


The Screaming Ground

by lifeitself



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, BAMF Doctor, Drama, Friendship, STRUCTURED LIKE AN EPISODE, author isn't a physics expert... but tries their best, fun times, i love thirteen so much, me? making up alien species? more likely than you think, some angst but not too much, they're basically in the middle of an alien
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-06 19:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16393352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeitself/pseuds/lifeitself
Summary: “You still haven’t said what’s wrong with the planet, Doctor…” Yaz objected, ignoring the pit of dread opening its maw in her stomach.“The second law of thermodynamics, Yasmin!” The Doctor threw her hands up into the air.It's never good news when you find yourself on a planet that's sentient... and it's also not great when you find yourself inside said sentient planet.





	1. Chapter 1

The Doctor pulled back a lever before slamming her hand down on the side of the console, not even blinking as Ryan, Graham, and Yaz grunted at the sudden takeoff and flew rather violently into the side of the Tardis. There was a devilish glint in her eyes, and without sparing her new friends a glance, she circled the console excitedly to face the display, stabbing her finger energetically at what looked like a large circle of pink dots.

“The Eridian Star Cluster,” she enthused, and Ryan stumbled over to where she was, while Yaz grumbled distantly and helped Graham regain his footing.

“The what?” asked Graham, sounding a bit put off.

“Eridian Star Cluster,” pronounced the Doctor, rolling the r’s dramatically. “Scintillation as the star's wavelengths pass through the moving atmosphere of their home planet refracts the light and sends it in different colors and different directions. A sort of chromatic aberration causes the cluster to twinkle in different colors- but the Eridian star cluster is special because they are colder than many other stars, meaning that their peak wavelength is a bit higher. That means they all twinkle in various shades of red. The locals call this star cluster the Rose Cluster, but I much prefer-”

Yaz had rushed over while she was talking, and peered excitedly at the screen, interrupting the Doctor.

“That’s where we’re going?” she asked, eyes bright.

“Well I wouldn’t just put it on the screen and tell you all about it if I was taking you to Sheffield now, would I?” grumbled the Doctor, shoving herself away from the screen with both hands and striding over to Graham, who was still hanging on tightly to the railing.

“Oi,- what’s wrong with Sheffield,” started Graham as the Doctor patted him on the back and encouraged him to let go of the railing.

“What’s wrong with Sheffield. Pah.” The Doctor spun away from him, heading towards the door of the Tardis. “Absolutely nothing is wrong with _Sheffield_ , Graham!” She flung open the door of the Tardis. “Brilliant! Are you all coming?”

Yaz turned to Ryan, who looked resigned. “Where else would we go?” Ryan shouted half-heartedly after her, but she was already out the door.

“I’m going,” remarked Yaz enthusiastically, darting out after the Doctor. Ryan glanced back at Graham, who was walking determinedly towards the door as well, and with a long-suffering sigh, followed him out, closing the door tightly behind himself.

“Doctor,” demanded Yaz as she fought to catch up with the woman, “why are we here?”

For indeed, it did not look particularly welcoming. The ground was rough and deep blue, with large, jagged shags of rock pulling out of the terrain, spiraling into malevolent yellow pointy geods. It would, perhaps, have looked quite pretty, were it not for the cloudy nighttime sky, but instead it looked like a large set of teeth, set to devour whomever stepped on the land.

“Wait, Doctor-” Ryan halted suddenly, and beside him, Graham’s face turned a shade paler.

“Doctor, what is that noise?”

The silence around them had vanished, and an awful screaming noise filled the air. It sounded as if someone was dragging a thousand forks down a ceramic platter at once, and Yaz immediately covered her ears and turned to the Doctor with wide, frightened eyes.

“What the hell is that?” asked Graham, moving closer to Ryan as if to perhaps protect him from whatever demon had been unleashed upon the planet.

The Doctor, however, looked as if she were the antithesis of scared. Instead, she seemed to be rather enjoying it, as her eyes were wide and excited.

“Do you ever just forget how brilliant alien planets are?” she implored them enthusiastically, before squinting at them oddly. “No you don’t, nevermind you lot. Anyways, the noise, yes-” she whipped out her sonic screwdriver, pointing it at the ground and waiting a moment while it buzzed. She then pulled it up to her eyes for a moment and looked at it closely, before a wide grin spread across her face.

“Brilliant. Absolutely- the sound, you see, comes from the gas inside the planet. We arrived at the exact moment that this started, so no doubt the locals are wondering what’s going on as well. Poor things, they’ll have no idea what’s happening.” She looked up and squinted towards the horizon. “The locals live right under the star cluster, so they should be about,” she gestured frenetically ahead, “thataways. About.”

“Wait, Doctor,” pleaded Yaz, and Graham nodded along with her, looking imploringly at the Doctor, “What exactly is making that sound,”

“And where exactly are we, anyways,” Ryan added, staring up into the cloudy sky. He could barely make out the bright, twinkling red stars that seemed to be almost directly above them.

“Ah, yes.” the Doctor enthused. “Right, about that - we’re on the planet Eris, circa, ah-” she took a very deep breath. “2100? Ish? I think. Tricky atmosphere, see, ‘specially now that all the gas is burning up - yes, speaking of- the sound, that is - Yaz.” She turned on her heel to face Yaz specifically, though her eyes darted up to the others as well. “The sound is caused by tiny holes is in the surface of the planet. The core of this planet, unlike many others, is made of a very volatile gas.” 

Graham looked nervously at the ground, as if expecting it to explode and swallow him full. 

“No, no no,” the Doctor corrected, seeing his face. “It isn’t a… problem, per say. Well. It isn’t - it wouldn’t usually be a problem, but I’ll get to that. The gas is hot enough that it’s burning itself up, but the pressure created from the process is immense. Luckily for anyone who lives here, this same exact occurrence must have happened when the planet had just formed and was still very molten, because there are hundreds of holes in the crust of the planet that carry all the way down to the core. Because of this, the planet doesn’t explode with all of the excess pressure. Instead, it lets it out in very intense gusts of pressurized gas through the few hundred holes on the planet’s surface… sort of like playing an instrument -like the flute. In this case, they noises are not quite as pleasant, perhaps, as the flute.”

Yaz stared at the Doctor for a moment. “But… how can the planet be solid on the outside and gas-”

“Yaz, as much as I’d love to explain that all to you, I have a bad, wonderful feeling about this, so I don’t have time to. Let’s go!”

Graham groaned, Ryan palmed his face, and Yaz looked particularly concerned as the Doctor took off again.

“God, but she runs fast,” fretted Yaz.

“And often, too. I have a weak heart, you know-” Graham faltered, “I don’t think I should run with you three. I’ll catch up.”

Ryan watched as Yaz ran towards the retreating figure of the Doctor, and then turned back to Graham.

“I don’t know that you should really stay alone on an alien planet, Graham,” Ryan began, “it’s probably best that I walk with you. I mean, how much trouble can Yaz and the Doctor really run into just telling the locals what’s happening on their planet?”

Graham looked rather relieved, although he quickly hid it. “I suppose so…”

* * *

The Doctor halted so abruptly as the town came into view that Yaz almost ran her over. Although, if the Doctor hadn’t halted so abrubtly, Yaz thought she surely would have missed the village entirely. The ridges emerging from the ground had grown taller as they had continued on, and now they towered above both their heads, looming shaggy and ridged in the sky. Built on the sides of these outcroppings were wide, pale yellow structures, so indeterminably constructed that Yaz couldn’t tell exactly what was rock and what was structure, though with careful inspection it was clear enough that not all of the rocks were naturally occurring.

Besides the screaming noise that the Doctor seemed already accustomed to, however, there was complete silence. Yaz glanced at the Doctor, whose brow was furrowed as she inspected her sonic screwdriver.

“Oh, this is bad.” Concluded the Doctor matter-of-factly after a moment.

“What’s bad, Doctor?” Yasmin replied hesitantly.

“Don’t know how I didn’t see it before. Stupid!” the Doctor replied in lieu of an actual answer, and without another word, she was sprinting again.

“Doctor!” Yaz continued, starting after her. “What’s bad! Doctor!”

Before long, the Doctor halted in front of a completely smooth cylinder, about seventy feet high, if Yaz were to guess. It was extremely wide, and unlike the structures around it, it looked unnatural, even though it was still a matching pale yellow.

“This, Yaz, is the safety chamber. It’s where the locals go when there are problems that need to be solved. It’s regarded widely as the safe haven, impenetrable and…well. Safe as physically possible.”

“Well,” began Yaz, “I mean, if they’re in there- the locals, that is- they’re safe, right? What’s the problem?”

“In theory, yes. They would be safe, if it were… anything else, really. However, if I’m right- and I’m reliably certain I’m right-"

"Of course you are," Yaz muttered

"See, Yaz, the safety chamber isn’t just as big as we see right now. This is the very peak of an immense structure that continues down into the ground for, well, miles. Sort of an apocalypse chamber. It’s built to fit them all in case of emergency. And if I’m right, Yaz, the problem is in the ground.” The Doctor scrubbed a hand over her face and raked it back through her blond hair. “That’s trouble.”

“You still haven’t said what’s wrong with the planet, Doctor…” Yaz objected, ignoring the pit of dread opening its maw in her stomach.

“The second law of thermodynamics, Yasmin!” The Doctor threw her hands up into the air. “The total entropy of an isolated system can never decrease over time. There is no way that the core of this planet could have spontaneously re-heated enough for the pressure to become so intense that it would-“ she gestured in an explosive motion. “See, even if the gas -impossibly- got as hot it had been when the planet first formed, there still wouldn’t be enough of it to be escaping so violently, because the pressure has already been lost. And that means,”

“It’s even hotter than it was when the planet first formed. But that’s- impossible, right?”

“Exactly,” the Doctor confirmed grimly. “Something in the middle of this planet is going terribly, terribly wrong – and its people are right in the middle of it.”

* * *

“I’m sure they’re not too far off now,” Ryan assured Graham, looking around desperately for the Doctor and Yaz, who seemed ever-elusive. The once small and shaggy protrusions on the ground were now towering above them, and it was so cloudy that it was almost impossible to see the tops of them. It was like wandering about in a massive, rocky yellow forest, and though Ryan wasn’t about to start screaming, the screeching of the ground in addition to being completely lost on an alien planet wasn’t exactly making him comfortable. 

Graham looked at him skeptically. “Say whatever you want, but I’m fairly sure we’re completely lost. And I’d know my way back to where we were, but the clouds are so thick I can’t be sure now.”

Ryan ran a hand down his face. “Well, let’s not worry about it,” he decided, worrying about it. 

Graham treated him with another skeptical look, but his gaze grew distant immediately afterwards, looking at a point over Ryan’s shoulder. Ryan followed his eyes, turning around. 

A large hole was fuming out grey steam behind him, and unlike the world around it, no sound emanated from the hole itself. 

“Dear God,” remarked Ryan, slowly walking closer to the hole. It was of an indeterminable depth, too steamy to make any good guesses about. Now that he was closer, the gas smelled rancid, and he covered his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt, coughing desperately. 

“Is this air even breathable?” Graham gritted out, pulling Ryan back from the hole. “I’m sure the Doctor is amazing, but she’s not exactly a paragon of health and security, and I don’t think we should jump straight into whatever’s happening like she does, without first making sure it’s at least safe.” 

Ryan rolled his eyes. “Graham- we’ve barely been along with the Doctor at all so far, and she hasn’t encountered one safe situation yet. It’s not as if we can just teleport off this planet on a whimsy now, is it?”

“Still, I worry,” frowned Graham, this time approaching the hole himself. Ryan huffed out a breath, rolling his eyes again. “Stay back then, Graham.” 

“I suppose that would be wise- what’s that?”

Ryan froze. The world had suddenly become quiet, eerily so. The screaming of the ground was gone, as if it had only been imagined. Almost as if on cue, the hole in front of them started spilling black smoke, tendrils of smoky black dust and ash curling through the air and spinning around Graham and Ryan. Ryan pulled the collar of his shirt up over his mouth frantically, gesturing to Graham that he should do the same. Graham moved to do so, but Ryan did not know if he had, as the smoke suddenly obstructed his view completely. 

“Graham? Graham?” The world was becoming impossibly darker around him, and Ryan stumbled suddenly. The last thing he knew was that he was falling, before it all went completely black as he fell into unconsciousness. 

* * *

“Well, why can’t we get them out?” Yaz asked for the fifth or so time, as the Doctor scanned the large cylinder for what seemed like the millionth time. The Doctor did not seem to be paying her any mind as she yet again drew her sonic screwdriver up to eye level, forehead wrinkling and mouth drawing into a frown. She was silent for a moment before she spun around, staring Yaz directly in the eyes in a very intense manner before snapping her fingers. 

“Well, you’re welcome to try. They’ve built this nearly impenetrable, as it is their safe house,” the Doctor started, turning back away from Yaz. “Not to mention, trying to get in would doubtlessly be seen as an attack, and from what I can tell of their buildings and this,” she flapped a hand at the safe house, “they will have suitably advanced weaponry. Not exactly a walk in the park to suddenly have a couple dozen alien blasters pointed at your forehead, so we’d best avoid that if at all possible, you know?”

Yaz sighed, rubbing her ears tiredly. Though the Doctor couldn’t seem to care less about the screaming of the planet around them, Yaz was quickly developing a pounding migraine behind her eyes. “Then what are we going to do, Doctor. Scanning it with your screwdriver thing a couple hundred more times surely won’t do anything, will it?” 

The Doctor made an indignant sort of harrumphing noise at her, immersed in yet another scan of the building, before suddenly becoming completely still. 

“Bad news,” she said after a moment, studying the ground intensely. “Well, that is, more bad news.” Her eyes flew up to meet Yasmin’s. “Where are Graham and Ryan?” 

Yaz glanced around. “Ryan’s with Graham. Graham wasn’t feeling up to running, so he- is something the matter?” 

The Doctor grimaced. “Well, something’s… not, not the matter. This just registered a huge energy spike.” She flipped her screwdriver in her hand. “Brilliant. Let’s head towards it.”

Yaz blinked slowly, running her hand through her hair before taking off after the Doctor. 

* * *

Waking up was a bit like swimming through a pool of sludge with rocks attached to his arms. Ryan blinked his eyes open very slowly, and as soon as he remembered what had happened, he sat bolt upright, eyes blurring and swimming as the blood rushed away from his face. 

The room around him was pulsing orange and red, and Ryan leaned back onto the ground where he had lain, eyes adjusting. 

“Graham?” he called a moment later. “Graham. Graham!” 

The enclosure was small, only high enough for him to sit up, and only wide enough for five people to lie down next to each other. The walls seemed to be made out of a thick, leathery membrane, illuminated from behind by what seemed like slowly blinking pink and red spotlights. Ryan could feel his heart racing faster and faster with each passing second, and he hit the side of the room with a fist, starting to panic. 

“Doctor? Doctor! Graham!” 

His shouting was fruitless. The only sound was a slow sort of pulse, like a massive drum being sounded several rooms away, every five to six seconds. 

Ryan’s breath sped up, and he squeezed his eyes shut. “Christ. You can do this. The Doctor will come, you just have to wait a bit.” He waited until his heart wasn’t threatening to pump out of his chest, and then opened his eyes again. “What would the Doctor do. What would-”

He looked closely at his surroundings, but to his dismay, there was nothing to have missed. There was no visible entry or exit from his enclosure, and Ryan felt a sense of pervasive dread and horror course through him. How would Graham know he was alive? How would Yaz and the Doctor know to keep looking? How was he to get food or survive? The panic threatened to choke him, and he tucked his head in between his knees.

It was a long moment before he looked up again, watching the slowly blinking lights behind the membrane as they faded in and out of existence. It was a bit hypnotizing, almost. They never appeared exactly in the same spot, seeming more content to appear in and out of existence wherever they pleased. As he watched the lights, he scrubbed at his hair, trying to understand how exactly he had ended up... _here._ It was hard to remember, exactly, but Ryan thought he could recall falling quite a distance. Focusing on the memory was hard, though, because the more he thought on it the more it seemed to slip away, until he wasn’t quite sure if he was imagining falling, or if it had actually happened. 

Frustrated, he turned his mind to Yaz and the Doctor. Were they trapped as well? No doubt the Doctor would have some sort of gadget buried in her pocket, had she been the one to end up trapped in some sort of strange alien membrane. Ryan had watched as she had done something strange to her coat pockets the other day, before shoving a metric ton of strange, unfamiliar items in them, not to mention a banana and a bag of candy. When Ryan had asked her why she would need candy and bananas in her pockets, she had looked at him in such an affronted manner that he had raised his hands in surrender. She had then cracked a grin and told him that, “You never _don’t_ need a banana and jelly babies, Ryan. It pays to be prepared.” 

The silence continued on, and Ryan’s thoughts drifted to Graham. He wasn’t Graham’s biggest fan, but he certainly didn’t want to _die_ or something without telling Graham he appreciated him, even just a bit. He was also concerned for Graham. Like it or not, Graham did care for him a lot, and he didn’t just want to leave Graham hanging. Sighing, Ryan leaned back on the membrane, sitting quietly for a moment before pushing back against it as hard as he could. There was a loud, nasty, and wet slurping sort of noise, and Ryan had a moment to register what was happening before he toppled, sliding out of the membrane. 


	2. Chapter 2

Yaz blinked, surveying the steaming grey hole with wide eyes. “Wait. Doctor, you’re saying they fell down there?” 

The Doctor looked grimly at the hole, forehead wrinkling. “This is the source of the energy reading, and I’m… yes, they must have…” she trailed off, running a hand through her hair. The hole choked out another dispassionate burst of grey steam, and Yaz wished rather suddenly that the Doctor hadn’t decided to show them the Eridian Star Cluster. 

“They couldn’t have gotten back into the Tardis, she’s locked, and we passed her on the way here. So most likely they’ve… gone in there somewhere,” continued the Doctor, gazing thoughtfully into the hole.

“So what are we-” Yaz was cut off as the Doctor leapt towards the hole, jumping in without a second thought. “Doctor! Just-” Yaz hurried over to the hole, the acrid stench of the steam making her choke. She spent a moment hyperventilating, weighing her options, before walking back a few steps and leaning down, preparing herself to sprint in after the Doctor.

“I hate that I have no other choice,” she muttered, closing her eyes before reopening them determinately a moment later, taking long strides towards the hole. She fell in. 

The fall was the worst part, but the landing was equally awful, really. With a muffled screech, Yaz bounced off of the pliable and wet surface of whatever it was she had landed on. Cursing, she stumbled to her feet only to fall back down due to her lack of balance on the strangely textured surface. 

“Yasmin? Is that you?” came the Doctor’s voice, and Yaz sighed in relief, squeaking as she braced herself on the warm, wet wall of whatever she had landed on. “Doctor! Doctor, over here-” she called, and a moment later, the soft light of the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver buzzed into existence, the light casting soft shadows onto the Doctor’s face and hair. “Yaz!” she exclaimed. “Sorry for jumping off like that, it’s just,” she motioned to the their surroundings.

“Praise Allah,” Yaz muttered, and then immediately yelped as she took in the aforementioned surroundings, pulling her hand away from the wall. It looked like she was inside of a a large, slimy muscle, and the floor was covered in fleshily textured dots and half-spheres. A pinpoint of white light was barely visible above her head, and Yaz groaned. “Doctor, what did we just jump into?” She asked, wiping her hand futilely down her pant leg, which was equally moist. The Doctor was silent for a moment. 

“A nostril,” she finally answered, and Yaz let out an exhausted breath, trying her very, very best not to just scream at the Doctor. “A _what?_ ” She moaned, moving to scrub a hand at her eyes before remembering why that was most definitely not a good idea. 

The Doctor just grinned. “A nostril, Yaz.” 

“How did you know that hole wouldn’t just _kill_ us? It certainly smelled awful enough,” Yaz shuddered. 

“Well, I guessed,” remarked the Doctor easily, pausing when she noted Yasmin’s murderous look. “Well. It was a very educated guess- brilliant, might I add,- I was _relatively_ sure it wouldn’t kill us. And look, I was right!” 

Yaz chose to ignore the last few sentences of the Doctor’s answer, at the same time resisting the urge to reach across and just throttle the woman. 

“Wait, Doctor,-” the woman was heading down a long, fleshy tunnel, and Yaz wanted to cry, a bit, “Where are you going? Shouldn’t we find a way to get out?”

“Get out?” The Doctor called back, sounding affronted. “Why would I want to get out?”

“I don’t know,” Yaz muttered under her breath. “Maybe because we are quite literally in the nostril of an unfamiliar alien?” Grumbling, she picked up her pace, doing her best not to slip and fall back down. 

“Of course you’re exploring this!” Yaz called, this time loud enough for the Doctor to hear her. “I know you think this is really interesting, but shouldn’t we find our friends?” 

“What makes you think our friends aren’t here?!” shouted the Doctor from where she was kneeling down several paces ahead to inspect something on the side of the nostril. “Are you coming?” she added as she stood up, hands on her sides, and marched determinedly forwards. 

“Ya Allah,” muttered Yaz, sighing and carrying on after the Doctor, who was jabbering loudly about spatial incongruity a few meters ahead. 

“Can you _believe_ this, Yaz? This physics defying planet- but it _isn’t_ physics defying - inhabited by a huge, dormant, and largely gaseous creature.” The Doctor made a noise of exultation, throwing her hands in the air. “Ugh!” she proclaimed, “I _love_ days like this.”

“Doctor,” Yaz chided, “Aren’t you worried about Graham? About Ryan?” Yasmin couldn’t deny that with every passing moment, the pit of dread she had been so keen on avoiding earlier grew larger in her stomach. She was seemingly trapped in a huge alien’s innards, searching for her friends on an alien planet, where her friends were also trapped out of her reach. And all this while at the same time trying to dissuade the Doctor from doing anything that could potentially endanger them or their friends. 

“I mean, I could be,” consented the Doctor, “but I’m really not. He’s not dangerous, he’s just scared.”

“Who’s- he? Just scared,” started Yaz squeakily, and the Doctor gestured widely around them,“and how is that good news for the two humans inside of...him?”

“It really isn’t,” ventured the Doctor, “but it’s certainly better news than an angry alien, or a existence-devouring void, or an alien that eats your entire timeline, or an alien that-” she paused, crouching in front of a very long, muscular tube that dropped down into the ground in front of where they were standing. 

“A what? Doctor-” Yaz began, keenly uncomfortable. She had an awful feeling about whatever was about to happen. 

“Look,” proclaimed the Doctor, sweeping her hands out in a grand gesture. “The esophagus.” 

“Doctor, I don’t think- whatever you’re thinking-” 

“It’s perfectly safe,” the Doctor consoled her. “Yaz. You’re doing an amazing job. And I promise- I promise we will find Graham and Ryan. They’ll be perfectly safe. You have my word. But for right now? We can’t _find_ Graham and Ryan unless we find out _why_ they disappeared in the first place. If we can’t find out why they were taken, then we run the risk of the same thing happening to us. However;” the Doctor paused, looking into Yasmin’s eyes carefully. “I think- I may know a bit of what’s going on here. And if I’m right - and I’m rather sure I’m right,- then they’re perfectly fine. The most important thing right now is- well, two things. First of all.” She stopped and turned around, pulling out the sonic screwdriver from her pocket and pointing it down the tunnel by their feet. A moment later, she nodded at her readings and turned back to Yasmin, who fingered the edge of her shirt nervously. 

“First of all, you need to know that this creature is made up of mainly gas, but, due to his unique composition, he’s,” she squinted, as if she were looking for the right words to explain the concept in the distance behind Yasmin’s head. “He’s in a state of thermodynamic phase equilibrium, which means that he is both gas and solid almost simultaneously.” 

“He’s… what?” Yasmin asked, running a grimy hand along her forehead, too tired to process the Doctor’s words. 

The Doctor seemed to bounce on her toes, rocking back and forth excitedly. “Thermodynamic phase equilibrium. Water, for example, on Earth, has a specific point where it can be both solid, liquid, and gas- all at once- due to a combination of temperature and pressure. It’s called the triple point - and when the pressure and temperature are changed, just ever so slightly- it shifts into different phases immediately. It’s- amazing, really,” she babbled. “Here, however, the process is slightly different. This alien self-regulates its own,” she waved her hands, “thermodynamic phase equilibrium. It’s in _control_ of its shifting. And! Also!” Here she seemed to get impossibly more excited. “The composition of his body is such that it’s a process of only immediate sublimation and desublimation- there is no liquid state, or point where he becomes liquid. Isn’t that fascinating? On Earth, thermodynamic phase equilibrium is called the triple point, because of the three states of matter, but here it would have to be called the double-” 

“Doctor. Doctor, wait-” Yaz interrupted. The combination of the ever-present shrieking of the planet, as well as the Doctor’s fast-paced explanation of advanced scientific methods, made her feel like her brain was on a stake being spitfired. “You’re saying that the alien is turning from gas into solid- at will?”

“Yes!” exclaimed the Doctor. “Exactly. Brilliant! You’re brilliant,” she added, grinning at Yasmin. Loathe as she was to admit it, the praise made her spirits lift a little, and Yasmin gave a half-hearted grin back. 

“Wait, so if he’s changing at will from gas to solid,” Yasmin asked, “then why doesn’t he just, you know,” she dropped her voice to a whisper, as if trying to prevent the alien whom they were walking inside to hear her, “turn to gas and let us fall.”

“Because! Don’t you see? He’s not angry. He doesn’t want to hurt the locals. He’s afraid. He’s scared of something, and _I_ think that that’s why he took Ryan and Graham. I think he’s trying to protect them.” 

Yasmin could feel her hopes soaring, and she became a bit breathless. 

“You mean it? You really think that they’re- that this alien doesn’t mean them any harm? That they’re alright?”

“Oh Yasmin!” the Doctor declared, “I’m almost completely positive. He’s protecting us now, even. It’s an insane temperature out there in the middle of the planet, and we’re not exactly roasting. And Yaz? We’re going to find them. We are most definitely going to find Ryan and Graham.” 

Yasmin suddenly felt a great deal better about everything, and not even the slime on her clothes and hands and the shrieking and the vague stench of alien innards could distract her from the feeling of excitement and hope bubbling against the previous panic in her stomach. 

“So where do we go?” she asked giddily, a grin rising onto her face without her consent. 

“Well,” the Doctor said, peering down into the hole which had a minute ago seemed like an impossible problem. “We need to find out what’s scaring him. And to do that, we should probably head towards the problem.” 

Yaz decided that getting excited and hopeful was extremely overrated. 

“Wait, Doctor, where is the problem? I thought you said the alien wasn’t a problem-”

“Well, this guy isn’t a problem,” agreed the Doctor, patting the inside of the alien’s nasal cavity with a fond hand. “But whatever’s heating up in the middle of the planet and causing that noise? That’s definitely a problem. Whatever’s making him scared? That’s a problem. And even if he’s the one increasing all this temperature,” she cast a glance around her, “there’s going to have to be a very good reason.”

Yasmin was struck with a wave of sudden determination. The Doctor did this sort of thing every single day of her life, and here she was, explaining things to Yasmin just because she was a bit confused and scared. Gritting her teeth, Yasmin nodded. “Let’s go then.”

The Doctor looked absolutely delighted. “Brilliant!” With that, she took a large step directly down into the tunnel, and Yasmin braced herself before sitting down on the edge gingerly, taking a deep breath, and pushing off the ground into the abyss. As she was falling, the shrieking on the outer mantle of the planet fell away, and the only sound as she fell was the sound of rushing air.

* * *

Breaking one’s fall on an invisible cushion of air has never been the most comforting way to fall, but Ryan was just glad his neck wasn’t broken, and that was all he really had the energy to focus on for the moment. If he let himself think about the fact that he seemed to be suspended in absolutely nothing, he was sure he’d probably pass out, and that was really the absolute last thing he needed. He let out a puff of breath, trying to take in his new surroundings and at the same time compartmentalize his emotions away from the more logical part of his brain. It really, really wasn’t working, and Ryan was pretty sure that was because what was happening to him right now was literally _defying the laws of physics._ The known laws of physics, anyways- who knew what the galaxy had in store when it came to science. The entire universe surely couldn’t conform to some laws a human made, could it now. 

Rolling his neck, Ryan let his surroundings come into focus. It was very, very dark, and the screaming, shrieking, scraping noise from the surface had been replaced by the gusting of a million winds, tumbling around him deafeningly. Interestingly enough, though, Ryan himself was protected from any buffeting wind. He was rather grateful for this, because the howling was so intense that he was sure that his skin might’ve been ripped off had he been directly exposed to it. Counting himself lucky, Ryan tried to maneuver his body in the cushion of strange air (which also, unfortunately, smelled extremely rancid) in order to see his surroundings. 

There must have been some light source somewhere, as Ryan was suddenly very aware that he was suspended several hundred feet above a fleshy sort of ground, which was pulsing sporadically. To his fearful dismay, this ground seemed to be evaporating and resolidifying every couple of seconds, and no matter how hard Ryan tried to convince himself that it surely had to be a figment of his imagination, it became increasingly obvious that the ground hundreds of feet beneath him was not always… ground. 

A cold sweat overtook his body, and he could feel his heart pounding. He could vaguely hear the same dull drumming noise from earlier, but the rushing of the wind which seemed so close to his face, yet never quite touching it, made his hearing was mostly completely muffled. 

More and more, the things around him seemed to come into focus, and Ryan squinted down at the flesh below him, pulsing in and out of existence. It was because of his intense focus that he almost didn’t notice when another large, leathery bubble formed around him, but in less than thirty seconds, he was in a enclosure almost identical to the previous one. Willing his heart not to give out, Ryan jumped into an almost crouch, spreading his hands out around himself to judge the distance from him to the wall and scanning what was around him. 

“Oh God. Doctor? Doctor…” he trailed off, “please. Please come soon.” He pressed a spread hand against the side of the room. It was warm and soft, and it pulsed gently, almost soothingly. Soothing or not, Ryan felt as if he was about to throw up, nausea and panic engulfing him. The backs of his eyes stung desperately, and his chest heaved. 

“You called?” came a familiar voice, and Ryan almost choked in relief. 

“Doctor! Doctor! I’m in here!” 

“Ryan? Ryan- Subhanallah-” came Yasmin’s voice, and Ryan slumped to the floor, a sob of relief crushing itself in his chest. “Yasmin, thank God,” he replied, voice hoarse. 

“We’ll get you out of there, Ryan, don’t worry,” came the Doctor’s voice again, and it soothed Ryan immensely. “Yeah, yeah, I know you will,” he replied, although it was mostly to reassure himself. Kindly, the Doctor did not reply, and the familiar buzz of the sonic screwdriver could soon be heard through the walls. 

An ice cold terror gripped Ryan’s heart. “Doctor!” he yelled, “the walls, they disappear- I don’t know if you’re safe- whatever you’re standing on could disappear any moment-”

“We just slid down an alien’s esophagus, Ryan,” came Yasmin’s voice, “we’ll be fine.”

“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” came the Doctor again, “he likes us. He brought you right to us, actually, sweet thing. And besides, I’m sure if he chose to get rid of his esophagus, we would be nothing more than liquid in a matter of seconds, due to the acidic nature of the gas and the high velocity of the gas and the temperature of the- aha!” 

Ryan’s heart was beating very fast again. “The what?”

The Doctor did not deign to reply.

“Excuse me?” she shouted, but it wasn’t to him, and Ryan wished for nothing more in that moment than for the Doctor to make even a lick of sense. “Excuse me, I don’t know your name, but I’m expecting you can hear me- my name is the Doctor. I’m a traveler, and these are my very dear friends. Would you _possibly_ be so kind as to let my friend out to me? He’s rather stuck, and rather frightened, but I know you don’t mean anything by it. You’re extremely kind to keep him so safe.”

“Safe?” Ryan exclaimed, and was immediately shushed by both Yaz and the Doctor, by the sound of it. “Don’t mind him,” she continued, “he doesn’t know just how much you’ve done for him yet.” 

There was nothing but the distant sound of wind and that constant thudding for a moment, before suddenly part of the membrane in which Ryan was enclosed opened, revealing the brightly smiling face of the Doctor and the worried face of Yasmin. “Oh my god, Yaz,” Ryan breathed, “Doctor. I thought you’d never be able to find me.” He clambered out, restraining himself from hugging the Doctor, who looked distinctly relieved when she realized he wasn’t going to hug her. 

“Pah,” grinned the Doctor, “you know me. Can’t keep my head out of trouble. Good thing it is, too. Have you seen Graham?”

“No,” replied Ryan, becoming somber. “I haven’t seen him at all yet- he was with me on the surface, but then- Doctor, there was this hole, and then it started-”

“We fell down- well, the Doctor and I went down that hole as well,” exclaimed Yasmin, hugging Ryan tight for a moment before backing up from him, a smile touching her face.

“No, no. We didn’t go down it on purpose, see. There was this black smoke, and all the sudden I fell- Graham must have fallen too, because you aren’t with him- do you think he’s safe?”

Yasmin was frowning again, but the Doctor looked lost in thought. “I’d reckon he’s safe, but I’m not sure why he’d keep you two seperate- and I don’t want to ask him too many favors, because I’d rather like him on my good side.”

“Him?” asked Ryan drearily, already dreading the answer. 

The Doctor smiled at him. “Him! We just slid down his esophagus, Yaz and I.” She turned to Yaz to give her the same brilliant smile. 

Ryan felt rather faint. “Well you’d mentioned, but I didn’t think you’d actually... we’re in an alien then?”

“Oh, yes. He’s rather nice too. Phases in and out of solid matter every so often, but who doesn’t?” And before Ryan or Yasmin had a chance to respond to that, the Doctor got a funny look on her face, a sort of mixture of excitement and exultation, and she eagerly entered into the membrane from which Ryan had just left. “Doctor!” cried Yaz, “be careful, it could close again-”

“It won’t,” corrected the Doctor, gesturing for the two of them to come in with her. “He’s amazingly nice, really. I think I’ll call him Chesterton. Look, he’s added a tunnel for us to go somewhere. He knows we want to help, I think.” She glanced to the ceiling for a moment. “We do want to help! We are going to help you,” she said very loudly, before turning to Ryan and Yasmin. “We are going to get to the middle of this, and we are going to find Graham. And then, we are going to go have Eridian black custard- I have a feeling that this body will enjoy it, and I’m dying to find out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have five hours of class break tomorrow, so you might get another fast update. please hit the kudos button! i literally die when that happens because it means you are enjoying this. i love writing it, and i want to know if you like it too. love to you all! p.s: the triple point/thermodynamic phase equilibrium is a real thing. like... look it up. its so COOL. see you all soon!


	3. Chapter 3

Watching the Doctor immerse herself completely in the task at hand was sort of like a window, Yaz thought, into her mind. Not completely, that is- Yasmin knew even now that she couldn’t keep up with all the Doctor’s thoughts if she tried for a thousand years, nor would she really want to. 

However, there was something almost magical about the extent of the knowledge the Doctor seemed to hold loosely in her hands. At the moment, she was completely quiet, but her eyes were sparking and glinting in the faint light of her sonic screwdriver, which she held ahead of herself like a torch. 

It was silent for a few moments, and Yasmin could almost pretend they were back on Earth, perhaps spelunking through a dark, wet cave with a very strange smell. 

“So, Doctor-” Ryan started, and the Doctor glanced at him from the corner of her eye. He took it as permission to continue. “What’s- what exactly is the problem here. I mean, what are we looking for?”

The Doctor didn’t reply for a minute,stopping abruptly and peering very closely at the wall, her nose so close to it almost touched.

“It’s got something to do with the laws of thermo- thermodynamics,” Yasmin answered him as they came to a stop besides the Doctor. The Doctor seemed content to focus on what she was doing, and so Yasmin continued. “The Doctor said that, well, the reason that the planet is so loud is because there’s a lot of high pressure gas escaping from,” she halted, “holes in the ground, I guess. That’s what’s making that noise. But according to physics, I guess, that shouldn’t be possible.” Yaz sighed, scuffing the ground with her foot. “You know, I really wanted something different to do, to explore, back at the station. I guess I got it, didn’t I?”

Ryan stared at her for a moment, and then shrugged, a half-smile gracing his face. “Guess you really did.”

“Shhhh,” interrupted the Doctor. “There’s something out there.” She was peering at the membrane with keen eyes, and Ryan’s brow furrowed in intimidated concern. “There’s what now?” 

“Things. People. Aliens. Stuff,” she replied shortly, mouth open and brow furrowed as she scanned the membrane with her sonic screwdriver. “Can’t get a proper reading though, so we’ll just have to ask Chesterton, our new friend, about it, eh?”

“Wait, you’re saying there’s more aliens outside of here,” Ryan gestured to the wall, “inside here?” He motioned to the wall again, which was rather confusing.

“Inside _Chesterton,_ ” scolded the Doctor, tilting her head towards him. “Don’t be rude. And yes.” 

“And wait,” Ryan continued, voice pitching up a tone and speeding up. “And you just want to go confront them? I thought you said we’d be, like, liquified or something-”

“If we’re not protected, yes,” the Doctor flapped her hands impatiently. “But Chesterton isn’t dangerous. He’s scared. There’s a big difference. He has no reason to hurt us, and he doesn’t seem to have an inclination to do so, so,” her voice grew rather excited. 

“Doctor,” pleaded Yasmin, “If you don’t know we _won’t_ be liquified, if you’re not really completely sure, it’s best not to tempt fate, don’t you think?”

“Yaz, there is absolutely nothing I hate doing more than _not_ tempting fate.” Yasmin opened her mouth and shut it again, lost for a reply.

“Now Ryan.” Continued the Doctor. “Quick, tell me - when we found you, had you been in there the whole time? Did you move at all?”

“Doctor, he fell in and passed out, remember? How could he have moved?” Yasmin asked, confused.

“Uh, well, actually,” Ryan admitted, “I didn’t wake up in that… room. Well, I woke up in a room just like it, but different. And then, well,” he shrugged awkwardly. “I fell through the wall and landed in… air. And I wasn’t… evaporated, so,”

“Oh, brilliant,” the Doctor murmured, a wide-mouthed smile overtaking her face. “You’re saying you were right in the middle of all the gas and you still weren’t hurt?”

“I mean, yeah? I think so- It was strange, really- I could hear all the wind and stuff, but it didn’t touch me, if that makes sense? And then I… there was another, membrane thing.”

“What?” asked Yasmin. “You weren’t hurt? That’s- but that’s impossible. The Doctor said that the heat and the wind would-”

“Well I was fine, alright?” Ryan interjected uncomfortably. 

The Doctor nailed him with a very intense look. “You were, Ryan. You were absolutely...fine.” Her voice was contemplative, and it wasn’t very comforting. Ryan was absolutely sure that she was planning something, and he really wasn’t looking forwards to it. 

The Doctor paused. “Did you see anything? While you were in the membrane, that is.”

“Well,” Ryan began, keenly discomforted. “There were moving lights, in the first one.”

“Lights,” echoed the Doctor, sounding delighted, but then her face melted into a frown. “Moving lights. That’s worrying.” 

“What is, Doctor?” asked Yasmin, who had been watching their interaction with wide eyes and raised eyebrows. 

“I’m thinking that those “lights” are most definitely the root of the problem. And that means that I wasn’t imagining the fading light I saw through here, just now,” she concluded, poking a finger to the wall. 

“So that means we’re going through, then?” Yasmin speculated, “Seriously, I’m not sure that’s safe…” Worry, fear and exasperation were written across her face. 

“Doctor, that can’t be safe,” Ryan sputtered, but the Doctor had tilted her head to the ceiling. “Chesterton, we’d love to help you,” she called, “if you would be so kind as to do this last thing for us. Help us help you, as it were.” 

Immediately, the side of the tunnel ripped open, and Ryan was singularly afraid for a millisecond, before he realized it was just as before, and though he could hear the air whipping around him, he was completely safe. Also, he realized that he couldn’t move. He was suspending by the sheer force of the air whipping in every which direction, as well as- Chesterton’s?- strange air bubble, but there was nowhere for him to push off of or gain momentum from, and therefore no way for him to move. 

Ryan blinked rapidly in order to clear his eyes, and out of the corner of his vision he could see Yasmin similarly frozen, trying to turn and failing, though she was moving her hands as if trying to gather momentum. She opened her mouth when she caught his eye, but then closed it immediately, realizing that it would be fruitless to speak due to the tumultuous thundering of the air around them. Instead, she nodded her head forwards, and Ryan followed her gaze to the Doctor, who seemed to be several feet ahead of them both. She was standing on a muscle, her hands by her sides as she surveyed the dark surroundings as best she could. When she saw them looking in her direction, she seemed to say something _to_ the muscle, and suddenly Yasmin and Ryan were standing on a textured sort of membrane. 

“Oh my God,” Ryan muttered, “I did not ask for this.” Shaking his head to clear it, he carefully knelt down and experimented with gaining momentum, pushing himself off from the muscle towards the Doctor with his legs.

To his surprise, it worked, and the Doctor reached out to grab him as his momentum carried him towards her. There was no way for their momentum to be stopped, and so the two of them, grasping each other by the forearms, swung through the air until they collided with a suddenly appearing wall of thick, leathery membrane. Ryan squeezed his eyes shut, grimacing, and then looked towards Yasmin, who did the same thing as he had a moment later and came floating towards them. Ryan reached out and grabbed her shoulder, and the three of them grasped each other’s arms in a long line. Yasmin and Ryan turned their heads towards the Doctor in silent question, looking for direction. 

The Doctor raised her eyebrows and nodded down. Ryan and Yasmin peered into the darkness below them, and after a moment, it became apparent that deep down in the distance, lights flickered in and out of existence, similar to the ones that Ryan had seen earlier. Dread seized him, and he exchanged a worried glance with Yasmin. 

“LET’S - GO,” mouthed the Doctor, looking for all the world as if this were something she did every single day of her life. Ryan felt suddenly quite weak and insignificant, as he could not seem to stop feeling scared, but he took a deep breath and pushed his fear to the side, instead looking determinately towards Yasmin, who shrugged, took a breath, and nodded at him. The Doctor glanced at them once more before sending herself, and by extension, all three of them, down from the membrane with a forceful push of her legs. 

“I hope this isn’t the last thing I ever get to see,” Ryan murmured to himself as they descended towards the lights.

* * *

Graham had absolutely no idea where he was, but he really wasn’t enjoying it. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy alien planets, mind. He hadn’t seen more than a couple, but he didn’t despise them, not really. It was just that every single alien planet that he had been to so far had been, well, out to get him. 

He supposed that Earth hadn’t been all daisies either, and that he really shouldn’t judge the planet based on all of its weird and abnormal problems, but this planet seemed to have a _lot_ of weird and abnormal problems.

He was out of his mind with worry for Ryan, and to a lesser extent, he was also quite worried about the Doctor and about Yasmin, but he knew that both Yasmin and the Doctor had good heads on both of their shoulders (even if the Doctor’s head seemed to him to be more madly brilliant and daring than particularly wise, as of yet). But Ryan? Ryan was his dyspraxic grandson who had fallen into a hole in the middle of a screaming alien planet, and was all alone somewhere. He had tried shouting to him and the Doctor for about an hour, but his voice had given out rather early on, and so now all he had was a chest full of worry and fear for his last piece of family. 

He had landed on something very wet and putrid, the stench of old fish and mold soaking through his clothes. He was damp, cold, and scared, and he was in the middle of a large, endlessly reaching piece of skin or film or some such thing. He was also surrounded by strange creatures with light emanating from the tops of their misshapen heads, as if they were made of light and then put inside a piece of vaguely humanoid clay. 

These creatures had two legs, two arms, and six eyes, but seemed to be devoid of any nose, mouth, or ears. They were hairless, dressed in a thick, wooly, formless clothing that covered their leathery skin completely, save for their heads. 

And they were walking… lights. That’s all that Graham could think to describe them as. From the tops of their heads, they glowed a light so bright that Graham didn’t want to look directly at it. The lights were various shades of red, some so light they seemed white and others a deep crimson. And they had not spoken a single word to him since he had arrived. They had moved to prevent him from leaving when he had stood up to run, but other than that, they had ignored him completely. 

He also had no idea what, exactly, they were doing. Each one held a small, oblong device in one hand, and a thin metal pole, about as long as Graham’s torso, in the other. He had tried to talk to them, but the rushing of the wind around him (yet somehow not touching him) was so loud that he couldn’t even hear _himself_. So now he sat, silently, watching as the creatures held the long poles up to the wind and then glanced down at the oblong device in their other hand, before repeating the process. 

There were at least fifty of them, milling around him and all doing the exact same thing, exactly in sync. It was unnerving, unnatural, and most of all, it was absolutely agonizing to watch, knowing that his grandson - his grandson!- was out there in this _thing_ and he wasn’t able to help him in any way. 

He decided to try talking to the creatures again. He balanced carefully and approached one.

“Excuse me? Excuse me-”

The wind, which he still couldn’t feel on his face, whipped away his voice. Graham felt an awful lot like he wanted to cry, or to scream. He couldn’t lose Ryan too. He had to find him. There was no other option. He couldn’t even let himself _think_ about other options. 

“My grandson- he’s out there. Please, you’ve got to let me go and help him-” Graham stood up, legs wobbling as he tried desperately to balance on the endless, fleshy land, illuminated only by the light of the creatures. Graham approached one of them, and it turned to him, eyes unblinking and cold. With no warning, it swiveled the large metal pole effortlessly towards him, pointing the blunt end of it directly between his eyes. There was no language needed for the action to come across as a serious threat, and Graham backed up, raising his hands halfway in a gesture of surrender. The alien lowered the pole to his chest, but it was clearly not a peaceful move.

“Please, I don’t mean any harm,” he insisted, ignoring the fact that it was surely impossible to hear anything he said. “Please. My grandson,” he gestured around them, “is out there. I need to find him. Please.” 

The alien said nothing, instead pushing the stick at his chest forcefully. Graham lost his balance and fell to the ground, and the alien moved away from him and back to its task, not sparing him a second glance. 

Graham pulled himself back to his feet, a steely determination running through him. He walked unwaveringly towards the alien, gritting his teeth. The alien was not turned towards him, but Graham did not care. 

“Look,” he started, uncaring as to whether or not he could be heard, “You may not be able to hear me, you may not be able to understand me, but there’s one thing you shouldn’t do, you hear? You never, ever, take me away from my grandson.” With that, Graham took hold of the alien’s metal pole and pulled as hard as he could, pulling it away from its owner and swinging it ferociously in front of himself defensively. Almost immediately, a dozen aliens swiveled to face him, eyes large and unblinking, heads glowing like radioactive beacons. The alien from whom he had taken the pole held out its hands imperatively, and Graham shook his head. 

“Take me to my grandson. I’m telling you, you had better take me to my grandson,” he demanded, his hands shaking as he shook the pole at the alien. As if controlled by a singular impulse, the aliens who had been watching him threateningly before took a step towards him, and Graham turned to find that there were aliens to his left and also to his right, moving in sync towards him. His heart sped up, a frantic rhythm against his ribcage, pumping so loudly that Graham imagined that they could hear it through the wind. He swung his pole, but they were not deterred.

There was suddenly a hand on his shoulder, and he turned halfways to see the six eyes of the offender before the world went dark once more. 

* * *

Yasmin opened her mouth, remembering almost too late that no one could hear her. Shaking her hands frustratedly, Yasmin tried to catch the Doctor’s eye, and succeeded in doing so a moment later. They were plummeting at a steady, slow rate, and the Doctor’s eyes seemed to be glinting with the desire to start babbling about something, but to Yasmin’s relief, even she was not exempt to the sheer intense howling of the wind ricocheting around them. 

“GRAHAM,” she mouthed, “DOWN - THERE?” She gestured towards the ground, where the sea of light specks was becoming a flood, seeming to sway back and forth in unison, like they were on some sort of synchronized pendulum. The Doctor’s face scrunched up, and she seemed to both frown, shake her head, and shrug all at once. 

“MAYBE,” she mouthed back, “FIGURING - IT - OUT,” 

She mouthed something else after that, but Yasmin wasn’t sure what it was, and the Doctor noticed, as she let out a visible sigh, throwing her free hand up and saying something further, which Yasmin couldn’t decipher either. 

Ryan, beside her, had his eyes shut almost comically tight, and she squeezed his forearm reassuringly. In return, his grip tightened even further, and Yasmin wondered momentarily if she would have bruises on her arm, before turning back to watch the Doctor. The woman had managed to pull her sonic screwdriver out of one of her many pockets after a moment of finangling, and she was now pointing it towards the lights, which grew brighter and brighter with every passing moment. Yasmin wasn’t exactly able to gauge the distance, but they seemed to be only a couple hundred feet above the lights now, and she wasn’t particularly keen on landing right in the middle of them. 

The Doctor, who had apparently just read the reading from her screwdriver, seemed to have had the same exact thought, as she suddenly gestured wildly at Yasmin. 

“NO - LAND,” she enunciated, and Yasmin nodded at her, then frowned. 

“HOW?” She yelled, realizing as she said it that the volume of her tone had absolutely no effect on the ability of the Doctor to hear what she was saying. 

The Doctor gestured to a thick wall of muscle that they were drifting towards, due to their angle, and then to a patch of relatively darker area down below that seemed to lack the swaying lights. “PUSH,” she mouthed, and Yasmin had a split second to prepare herself before the Doctor was shoving out her legs, angling them just so as to push against the muscle and correct the angle of their descent so they would be able to land in the darker area.

Yasmin, who had done absolutely nothing at all, and had barely processed the Doctor’s actions in the first place, gave the woman a weak thumbs up. The Doctor looked to be nothing but delighted. 

It was scarcely a full three minutes before they descended enough to make out what exactly the lights were. They seemed to be humanoid figures, but as they drew somewhat closer, still seeming to be out of view of the creatures, it became obvious that their faces and heads were completely flat save for six eyes on the front of their face. Their skin was wrinkled and leathery and almost baby pink, and Yasmin stared at them with wide eyes, her sharp intake of breath entirely involuntary. 

They landed, and Ryan’s knees gave out beneath him, his eyes flying open suddenly, while Yasmin managed to buckle her knees in order to keep her balance. The Doctor landed as though she had been doing it her whole life - for all Yasmin knew, she had- and then she was squinting at the aliens, letting go of Ryan’s forearm and walking in their direction ever so slightly.

There were a hundred or so of them that Yasmin could see from the ledge they had landed on, and though the three of them were in shadow at the moment, it would be easy enough to step into the light only a dozen or so feet away and become targets for whatever the aliens would wish to do to them. 

The Doctor was squinting at the creatures and shaking her head, and then she said something with her head angled towards the wall. It took a moment, but the wind grew more muffled as a sheet of membrane built itself up around the three of them in around three seconds. 

“Doctor?” Yasmin tried experimentally, and her voice carried. 

“Aha!” The Doctor exclaimed. “Yaz, Ryan, you are both so, so impressive- now- for the bad news-”

“Doctor, I don’t …” started Ryan, who looked rather faint, but the Doctor shushed him. 

“What we just experienced there was the wonder of Newton’s first law. Well, I say it was Newton’s, but that’s what you humans know it as- Borinivich the Fourteenth made the law, actually, a couple millenia before Earth, but he wasn’t about to go visit Earth to tell you all that, you all would have had a fit when it came to his purple skin-” she shook her head. “Thank you, Chesterton,” she added fondly, patting the new membrane caringly. 

“Doctor, what are those things?” Ryan asked rather demandingly, gesturing to the membrane wall, transparent enough to reveal the glow of the creature’s lights. Yasmin could tell he was very uncomfortable, and squeezed his forearm again before letting go. The Doctor, however, didn’t seem to register his tone at all, instead frowning a bit at his question and sighing. 

“Those are the Yeu,” she replied grimly. “They’re, well- they’re a warrior species. They aim to conquer whatever they come across, and are constantly in search of power, currency, riches, and also favors from those that they cannot conquest. Whatever they’re doing here, I can absolutely guarantee that is not peaceful. They never, never are.” 

“That’s a problem for whoever lives here,” said Ryan, and Yasmin bit her lip in agreement. “What do you suppose we should do about them then, Doctor?” he asked. 

“Well. First- figure out what they’re doing here. Second - get them off this planet, and _out_ of our new friend.” 

“Sounds like a plan,” Yasmin decided after a short moment, “but where do we start.”

“That is a very, very good question,” answered the Doctor. “Luckily for you, Yaz,” she continued, stretching out the z of Yasmin’s nickname, “I think I may just have an answer. A working one too, at that!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you enjoyed! much love. next update coming soon


	4. Chapter 4

“And you’re sure this is gonna work?” Ryan muttered. He wasn’t quite able to stop his voice from trembling just a bit. 

“Oh Ryan,” the Doctor said, and in that moment she looked more like an alien than he had ever seen her, “I’m never sure. I just make very, very good guesses. I’ve talked it all out with Chesterton- we’ll be fine.”

“Doctor,” Yasmin implored, “I-” she cut off, looking frustrated with herself. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I barely even know what aliens _are-_ how am I supposed to be able to help?”

The Doctor became quiet for a moment before replying. “You both. You’re amazing. And you’re a part of this universe, spinning all your lives like clockwork around a tangle of burning gas at millions of miles an hour. And here you are, stepping out of the life you’ve made significant for yourself, all on your own, and stepping into the unknown. You’re travelling the entire galaxy, Yasmin, Ryan. If that isn’t an accomplishment, what is?” 

As suddenly as a flipped switch, the Doctor gave them a quicksilver grin and spun back to face the wall of bulbous membrane. 

“You know the works. Don’t do anything,” she paused, as if rifling through her head for words, “stupid.” 

“Yeah, we’ll leave that to you,” Ryan muttered, and Yasmin shot him a sharp look followed by a reproachful grin, before stifling a giggle. 

The Doctor appeared to have heard nothing. “Chesterton,” she called, “if you wouldn’t mind!” 

“Does he understand English?” Yasmin wondered, and the Doctor grinned at her.

“That’s the Tardis translation matrix for you,” she began, and seemed to want to say something else, but the membrane was disappearing, and with its departure came the buffeting, deafening wind. 

Then they were back in the shadows, and without even stopping to consider, the Doctor immediately stepped towards the aliens, who still were caught up in their synchronized swaying. They extended a large metal stick to the sky with one of their hands, before glancing down at their other hand, which held a thick, oval object. 

The Doctor took a deep breath, rolling her shoulders, before lifting her hands up as if she was conducting an orchestra. As if on cue, a membrane began to build up around them and the aliens, quickly at first before slowing as it cut off directly above the alien’s heads. 

The wide, open space was suddenly only big enough to fit the occupants, which included the three of them. The rushing of air became a mere, sharp whistle before cutting off entirely within the membrane’s closing.

The creatures stopped in unison, and there was silence in the space before an almighty groaning became audible, and Ryan took a step back with Yasmin as the Doctor stepped into the light, immediately catching the attention of the creatures. They turned towards her, their unblinking eyes narrowing in unison. The groaning became louder. 

With a start, Ryan realized that it was not _Chesterton_ making the noise, but instead the aliens, all at once. “Is it some sort of, like, hive mind,” he whispered to Yasmin, who shook her head, shrugging slightly, eyes fixed on the Doctor. 

“Oi, what _are_ you lot doing down here?” began the Doctor, very loudly.

The groaning increased, and the aliens moved towards the Doctor in sync. 

“No, no no no no. Designate yourselves. It’s the law and you know it- what are you doing on this planet?” the Doctor insisted cheerfully, and the noise increased and increased until suddenly, it became audible as words.

Yasmin covered her ears with her hands as the voice spoke so loudly that she could still hear it as well as a speaker on full volume directly next to her ear. Next to her, Ryan did the same, stumbling backwards slightly with the volume of the language. 

“ _We are the Yeu. We have come to this planet to earn favor in the sight of the Prince of Eris, who has commanded us. Now designate_ yourself _. Who are you to stop us?_ ”

The noise ceased, and the Yeu stepped forwards again. The Doctor’s eyes widened, and she spoke quickly, eyes clever and keen and deciphering. Yasmin just _knew_ that she had figured something big out. 

“You’re reaping this planet, aren’t you. You know that’s illegal. That’s against Galactic Law-”

Without warning, the noise came back, and Yasmin pushed as hard as she could against her ears to no avail. It was as if the Yeu were laughing, only it was a sharp, grating sound, like feedback from a microphone coming too near to a speaker, amplified a thousand times. 

“ _And yet who are you to stop us? You are only one. The gas held in the core of this planet is invaluable. Who are you to hold fate in your hands? And who are we to ignore its calling? We will sit on the throne of the universe.”_

“Not if I have a say in it,” replied the Doctor seriously. “I won’t let you do that.”

It was as if she was looking past them, seeing them only as particles of the universe, a barely necessary galactic constant, a shred of the universe. “I’m the Doctor. Upholding the fate and the fairness in the universe?” she tilted her head to the side, eyes piercing and burning like a hundred suns. “That’s what I do.” 

“ _Do your best then, Doctor,”_ came the scornful reply. _“You will not succeed.”_

The Doctor widened her stance ever so slightly. “You’re not just reaping a planet here- illegally, might I add. You’re taking the life force of a creature and selling its only means of keeping itself alive on a black market. What price are you willing to pay for losing your morality?” 

“God, they’re doing what?” gasped Ryan. 

“I think they’re taking the gas that this- Chesterton is made of and selling it,” replied Yasmin quietly, frozen in a bit of shock. “It’s killing him. That’s... so cruel.” 

“Yasmin- didn’t the Doctor say we had landed on Eris?” asked Ryan apprehensively, and foreboding sank into Yasmin’s skin. “She did, didn’t she. The prince of this planet is destroying it.” 

“Allah have mercy,” Yasmin declared in a whisper. “Galactic politics really aren’t any better than the ones on Earth, are they?”

The Doctor was looking at the aliens, solemn and quiet. They stared back. They had stopped moving for a moment, but then the noise returned, impossibly louder than before. It was the scraping laughter again. 

_“We do not have morality, Doctor. We seek only to preserve our spot among the species who will never perish, and we will do whatever is needed to stay there. And now, Doctor? You will die.”_

“No I won’t,” criticized the Doctor loudly, suddenly, and very very brightly, as Yasmin jumped in fear. “You lot have forgotten one thing, one crucial, crucial thing, one thing you really shouldn’t ever even think about thinking about forgetting- and that is! That you should never, ever,” she paused, and her smile was deadly. “Leave me talking.”

She pulled out her sonic screwdriver and aimed it at the Yeu, slashing it across the air in front of her. The devices they held sparked, and Yasmin felt the hair on her arms stand up in shock as an electric current ran around the room. The creatures seemed to pause for a moment before starting a commotion, and Yasmin realized that what the Doctor had just done was shorted out all their devices- the devices they had presumably been using to harvest the gas from Chesterton. 

“That’s not going to make them happy,” Ryan moaned. 

“They can’t use those to hurt Chesterton anymore though,” replied Yasmin, “but still- this wasn’t really part of the plan.” 

“You don’t say,” moaned Ryan. 

The creatures moved again, and the Doctor was now only about five feet from the closest of them, standing her ground with her sonic screwdriver in front of her. 

“You lot really don’t learn, do you?” she lectured, her voice clear of any fear or apprehension. “Doesn’t leave a lot of room for common sense when you’re so filled with concerned about eternal riches. Besides, haven’t you learned anything? Eternity isn’t all what it’s cut out to be.” Her voice turned darker and more foreboding, and Ryan shuddered. “Back off while you can. Leave the planet. Stop your ravaging, and I won’t come after you. Don’t make me have to stop you.”

“ _No one can stop us._ ” replied the Yeu, a solemn promise.

With that, they stepped forwards again and again, until the Doctor was nearly two feet away from them. 

“W _ell,_ ” exclaimed the Doctor, “That didn’t work.” 

“Shocking,” Ryan muttered to Yasmin, who shrugged. 

“I suppose that’s what she gets for her plan amounting to ‘destroy their devices and ask them to stop nicely,’” she concurred. 

Her voice was a bit too loud. 

The aliens, whose arms had been stretching out towards the Doctor, swivelled to face Yasmin and Ryan, whose faces had been cast into their light thanks to their slow encroachment. 

Ryan cursed under his breath. 

“ _Who have you brought down with you, Doctor?_ ” exclaimed the Yeu, furious and loud.

“Oh, them?” the Doctor declared, voice falsely bright. “They’re very, very important officials from the Shadow Proclamation. There’s Yasmin, and next to her Ryan. In the next few seconds, they will call down troops from their superiors in the Shadow Proclamation itself. I warrant the troops won’t all be exactly ‘mandated’ though- I hear you’ve made the Judoon quite mad the past couple of years, and we all know how corrupt their methods of justice are.” 

The creatures shifted, clearly uneasy, and Ryan fought the urge to gape. “What is she _doing?!”_ he hissed at Yasmin from the corner of his mouth. 

“Don’t ask me!” she replied lowly, “But I have a feeling we’d best play along.”

“ _Is this true?”_ asked the Yeu, their shrieking voices callous. They turned in sync to fix Yasmin and Ryan with six-eyed glares of fury and hatred. 

Ryan stepped forwards further into the light. “Yeah, it’s true. We’re from the Shadow, uh, Proximation, and we’re, uh, very mad,” he announced, hands fiddling with his pockets, feet shifting back and forth uncomfortably. “Ryan,” Yasmin started desperately, groaning. “He’s my intern!” She yelled, “He means Proclamation!” But it was to no avail. 

“ _Do you take us for fools, Doctor?”_ The voice of the Yeu was eerily amused, and then their eyes turned deadly, shifting from ‘generally human’ to pure, malevolent white.

“ _Kill them.”_

“Well, that backfired,” the Doctor proclaimed, voice full of nervous energy and excitement. Yasmin and Ryan looked at her fearfully.

“Doctor! What do we do?” cried Ryan, while Yasmin watched the Yeu approaching with wide, scared eyes. 

“Stop!” Yaz cried, as the Doctor ducked an outstretched alien arm with a deft backbend, a twist, and an unnecessary grin. “What do you need the gas here for? What does the Prince want you to do?”

“ _Sublimation point energy for his Majesty’s five thousand armies. Weapons of a caliber never seen before, able to form and dissipate at will within his Majesty’s victims.”_

“At the expense of his own planet?!” Ryan yelled. 

“ _Why not? They are not eternal.”_

“Oh, I get it. I _get it!”_ shouted the Doctor suddenly. “Stupid! Stupid! You all aren’t doing this for power. You aren’t doing this for the eternal life of your species. You’re doing this so you don’t lose face. You’re doing this so the Prince of Eris doesn’t realize that he’s employed a ravaging species at the bottom of the food chain- mercenaries and scavengers and bounty hunters who don’t even have the slightest idea what they’re doing.”

_“You dare?”_

“Everyone knows that the crown prince of Eris is corrupt. It’s not exactly top secret!” The Doctor crowed, her body a livewire of energy. “If the locals could pin anything that he’s done on him, they would- problem is, they haven’t been able to find any evidence, because although the Prince is a traitorous, villainous scumbag, he isn’t stupid. He knows how to get away with the awful things he does to the planet, and oh, he does it well. But you knew that. You must have known that if you took him up on a job and if he slips up - even the tiniest, _tiniest_ bit, you will be hunted down across the galaxy for illegal mining of a planet’s resources. But no, you wouldn’t have risked that. You lot are too smart for that- so the _only_ reason you would be here was if you had no other choice, if you _had_ to take the job. Because otherwise? You’d go extinct and your name would be spat on for all eternity. Oh, you lot are clever. You’re clever, I’ll give you that. But me? Oh, I’m the Doctor. And you aren’t going to get away with this.”

_“You fools. We already have. The creature that inhabits this planet is dying. The locals are none the wiser. In no time at all, we will have harvested the remainder of the gas from this planet, and then we will leave and utilize our riches to restore the name of the Yeu.”_

“Double-crossing the double crosser,” muttered Ryan, “because that always works so well.” 

“What do you mean, the locals are none the wiser?” exclaimed Yasmin. “Have you seen the top of this planet? Are you daft? The whole planet is shrieking because of whatever you’re doing down here- the locals have gone into hiding! They aren’t ‘none the wiser,’ they’re out of their minds with worry! They’re in their safe-house, trying to figure out what’s happening!”

_“You have lied long enough. Kill them, kill them now!”_

“Oh, that’s never good news,” shouted the Doctor, turning around and sprinting towards them. The membrane in front of them narrowed into a tunnel, a silent request answered, and the three of them sprinted down it together, the Yeu behind them taking slow, steady, and unstoppable steps after them. 

“If we can get to the top of this planet now and let the locals know what’s going on, the Prince will be forced to order them off. It’s a bit of a rubbish plan, but it’s going to have to work. Come on!”

“How are we going to get _in_ to the safe house, Doctor?” asked Yasmin, “it was locked, remember? You said- you said that any attempt to enter would be taken as a threat.”

“Why would they believe us anyways,” gasped Ryan, trying his best not to trip. The adrenaline was fogging his vision, and he found it hard to gauge the distance between himself, the ground, and the walls around him. The only thing keeping him running was the thud of alien feet behind him. 

“Well the Yeu will be right on our tails, so it’s going to be pretty obvious that something is a threat!” yelled the Doctor, and there was a manic grin on her face and a glint in her eyes which had never spelled anything good for anyone. 

“Doctor, what about Graham?” gasped Yasmin, the knowledge that the man was still with the Yeu dumping across her brain like icy water. “They’re going to kill him.”

“No they aren’t!” the Doctor shouted, eyes blazing with excitement. “He’s right in the middle of them, but they don’t know he’s with us. I would have gotten him out soon as I saw him, but I remembered that he wasn’t especially fond of running, and I figured that the Yeu aren’t smart enough to coordinate their hive mind to run on such a large scale without a few casualties, so I figured he’d be safest with them. I saw him when I was - ha- talking,”

“They aren’t exactly stupid either though, Doctor!” Ryan yelled, terror coursing through him at the thought of losing his - Graham. “They’re going to find out that-”

“Not if you don’t yell about your relationship to him at the top of your lungs, Ryan!” reprimanded Yasmin, cutting him off. “Doctor, what is Graham going to do once he reaches the surface?”

“Oh, he’ll be right by the Tardis. They’re a bit preoccupied with us, they won’t notice him slipping off- aha! Our apologies for trampling through you like this, Chesterton, honestly-” the Doctor apologized as a stairlike membrane sprawled into existence before them at the end of the tunnel.

“How do you know he’ll go to be by the Tardis!” Ryan exclaimed. “You can’t possibly know he’ll do that! I’m going back for him, Doctor, I can’t leave him there!” He stopped running, and Yasmin and the Doctor stopped running a moment later, turning to him. Yasmin’s eyes were wide and terrified as she looked at him, and the Doctor’s face turned grim. 

“Ryan, you need to trust me. I signalled my plan to Graham while the Yeu were talking, but if you run off now-” her eyes glanced back down the tunnel, which was getting brighter and brighter as the aliens slowly marched towards them. “I can’t guarantee your safety, or his. You need to come with us, and we need to move now, and I _promise_ -I promise, Ryan, that I will do _everything_ in my power to keep your family safe.” 

There was a moment of quiet deliberation as Ryan stood there, weighing his choices. 

“You’d better be bloody serious about that then, Doctor,” he whispered, eyes cold. “Let’s go.”

The Doctor shifted quietly, eyes empathetic, but Ryan’s set jaw dissuaded her from continuing with any potential further vein of speech. She nodded towards the stairs abruptly, and the three of them set off up them. 

As they ran up the stairs, Ryan became aware of Yasmin’s concerned glances his way, looking to him and back as if she wanted to say something to reassure him, or help him in some way. It was irritating. 

“Leave it, Yaz,” he muttered, and Yasmin looked away from him as if burnt. 

“I know he’s your family, Ryan. But we’ve got to trust the Doctor- we’ve got to keep believing he’ll be safe.”

“I said leave it, Yasmin. He’s not-” Ryan stopped, gritting his teeth, and growled under his breath, pacing himself to run faster so that Yasmin wasn’t next to him. 

It must have been several minutes, but it seemed that before long a pinpoint of light became visible above them, and the stairs came to an end to reveal another long tunnel with that same light at the end.

“That’s it then?” Yasmin asked the Doctor, who showed no signs of breathlessness, her cheeks flushed and eyes sparking. 

“Ryan, Yasmin, we are almost there,” confirmed the Doctor, eyes bright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll probably update again monday! my laptop is broken and I can't afford a new one so it's hard to find computer time recently. i just want to let you all know that the comments you leave here fuel me so, so much. The kudos, as well- every time you guys click that button i smile like no one's business. it's so encouraging to know that you actually like this... beyond what you can imagine. thank you so much. if you want to ask me anything off ao3, feel free to ask me questions on @lifesitself on tumblr :).   
> see you guys soon! lots of love


	5. Chapter 5

The shrieking of the planet’s surface had returned halfway up the stairs, and it whistled through their ears like a tune to a familiar song. Yasmin wouldn’t say that she’d missed it, but the tangible nearness of solid ground- that wasn’t alien innards- was undoubtedly appealing. The running, however, was taking its toll on her, and the adrenaline wasn’t coursing quite fast enough to keep the burning in her lungs at bay. Her legs threatened to shiver and collapse with every step, and the edges of her vision were rimmed in static black and grey. 

“Doctor,” she gasped, but couldn’t say anything more as the loss of breath from even the single word took its toll on her, making her intensely, unbearably dizzy. The Doctor looked at her, and concern flashed across her face. 

“You’re doing brilliant, Yasmin, just hang on in there.” 

Yasmin couldn’t have replied even if she had wanted to, so instead she continued to sprint, glancing back at Ryan, whose face was set stonily, even while he panted heavily as he ran. 

They reached the end of the tunnel, and Yasmin’s legs could move no further as they emerged from a different hole in the ground than the one in which they had entered. Her blood rushed to her head more and more the longer she stood still, and she felt herself sway forwards and to the side. She wasn’t fully aware of her movement, only dimly aware of her stumbling.

“Yasmin,” came the Doctor’s voice, “it’s right ahead of us, I promise. Chesterton led us out of one of the bigger holes in the planet’s surface, and it’s right by the safehouse. You’re brilliant, come on, I know you can.” 

Yasmin blinked hard and forced back into awareness, her lungs not able to pull in enough air for her to breathe. 

“That’s it. Breath steady now. Good girl.” The Doctor’s blond hair came into Yasmin’s vision, and then her eyes, bright, concerned, and encouraging all at once. Yasmin nodded slowly, pulling in deep breaths, then concentrated on her surroundings. Ryan, though still stiff and awkward, looked concernedly towards her, before looking behind them at the mouth of the hole. “Doctor- they’re coming-” he said, and the Doctor straightened, peering into the tunnel. 

“That they are. Onwards!” and with that, they were off again, Yasmin’s side threatening to split in two. 

They reached the conical safe house quickly, and the Doctor immediately whipped out her sonic screwdriver, adjusting something on its side and hitting it against the palm of her hand. A second later, she aimed it at the safehouse, and the buzzing sort of whir filled the air again. 

“Doctor?” asked Yasmin, breathing heavily, “they’re coming out of the tunnel, look,” the dizziness hit her again, and she braced herself on the safehouse with a hand, gasping.

The Doctor made an impatient sort of noise. 

“I’m trying to disrupt the frequency, it didn’t work before because I was using the wrong sort of wavelengths for the molecules, didn’t account for the Doppler effect, stupid, of course it’s redshifted, this is Eris, after all,” muttered the Doctor under her breath, “and reveal the- aha! Brilliant! Here we are,” she grinned as the door came into view and slid open, revealing a long pathway that curled down to the right further, lit on both sides by gleaming red lights which flickered every few seconds, remind Yasmin slightly of the Eridian Star Cluster she had so briefly seen on the Tardis’ console.

“In you get!” exclaimed the Doctor, pulling them in with her and closing the door behind them with a flick of her screwdriver. 

“Uh, Doctor,” began Ryan, and it seemed as though he was shooting for a cold, removed voice, but wasn’t quite able to pull it all the way off, “have you really just gone and trapped us inside a facility full of aliens scared out of their wits?”

“Did you have a better idea?” began the Doctor rather sourly, but then turned towards the hallway. “Besides, we’ll be sure to explain carefully and quickly and, oh dear that isn’t good,” 

Around the corner, a stately man with deep red skin and entirely violet eyes came into view, flanked by several other aliens with thick, ruby-toned armor and rust-colored skin which ranged from more red to more golden. 

“Doctor?” inquired Yasmin concernedly as the aliens strode towards them, “Who are they?”

“The locals, Yaz. And that’s the Prince of Eris.” replied the Doctor, face set grimly.

“Oh, damn it,” cursed Ryan lowly, and the Doctor’s posture turned from defensive to that of a confused but well-meaning traveller as the aliens stopped in front of them. 

“Who are you?” asked the Prince, his voice gritted and cold. 

“We’re travelers, and we were just stopping for some of your famed and absolutely gorgeous tasting custard, when the ground started to, well, scream,” the Doctor started, eyes bright,

“We don’t mean any harm, really,” continued Yasmin, interrupting the Doctor. “Honestly, we’d leave straight away, if it wasn’t for the fact that, well...” she trailed off, realizing that she was speaking to the Prince who had started the mass harvesting of his own planet, and that he probably wasn’t very inclined to listen to her talking about his attempted destruction of his people. 

The Doctor grimaced awkwardly at her pause, but Ryan seemed unaffected by the Prince’s appearance.

“If it wasn’t for the creatures on our tail, the Yeu, according to the Doctor, trying to off us every chance they got,” finished Ryan harshly. “In fact, they’re right out there now, so before you open the door and try to kill us too, you might rethink that. They aren’t too happy with you right now, I’d wager.”

The Prince’s skin seemed sallow and pale suddenly, and he glanced from the Doctor to Ryan and then back to Yasmin with frightened eyes. “What do you want,” he whispered desperately, “name it, and it will be yours. Even up to half of my kingdom, and I swear it will be done.”

“The kingdom that you’re killing?” rejoined the Doctor harshly, eyes brilliant and cold like the galaxy from which she came.

The soldiers behind the prince shifted uneasily. Though their composure stayed professional, their posture was uneasy, and it was very clear that they weren’t comfortable. 

The Prince straightened, eyes narrowing and jaw setting. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replied, “and I don’t have the patience to hear it. You say that there are creatures outside our doors- and yet here you are, alien yourselves. I’d wager that you’re here to divide and kill us all yourselves, spreading untruths all the while. Why shouldn’t I have my guards kill you where you stand?”

“Because the Yeu will track you down,” began the Doctor, cold and clinical, “and they will not stop at killing you. They will kill your entire race, and then they will move on to the next galaxy, and the next after that, until they have extinguished anyone who has ever even _thought_ your name. So great is their rage that they will kill even the thought of you from the entirety of history. How much blood can you stand to let your hands steep in, Your Majesty?” she ended, her voice powerful and derisive. 

The Prince sneered, but fear lay heavily behind his eyes. There was silence for a moment as he struggled with himself, before his emotion overtook him and he snarled, eyes alight with fury and fear. 

“Then tell me what to _do!_ ” He snarled, voice angry, “and stop standing there like the fools you are!”

The Doctor shifted, eyes ancient and solemn and angry. “You are a coward, Your Majesty. No amount of recompense will clean the blood of a dying planet from your hands.” She gazed at him a long moment that felt almost glaringly eternal, before whipping around to look at Yasmin and Ryan. 

“Where are your people?” she asked the Prince, not looking at him.

He did not speak, and it was one of the guards who spoke up, voice unsure. “They’re down the hall and in the atrium, er,…” 

“Doctor,” finished the Doctor, glancing at the soldier who had spoken from the corner of her vision. “Call me the Doctor.” She looked to Ryan and Yasmin. “Yasmin, Ryan, go alert the people to the problem. Ideally, without bringing a rampage on my head. Your Majesty,” she continued, eyes shuttering cold, “you need to talk to the Yeu.”

“But you just said they’d _kill_ me!” exclaimed the Prince, voice arrogant and fearful. “The people need a leader, you can’t possibly-” “The people need a leader who won’t sell them at the tip of his hat!” shouted Yasmin. “You don’t think of them as your people, you think of them as a means to an end, a sort of currency that you can just throw away and misuse how you like. They have lives! Lives outside of your jurisdiction, lives that you’re ruining with your plans for riches and power. If anyone needs to confront the Yeu, your Majesty, with all _due_ respect, it should be the person who hired them to kill his planet.”

The soldier who had spoken before let out a shuddering breath, and seemed to gather his wits before asking, “Is this true, Your Majesty?”

The Prince sneered, silent and derisive. “Is this _true,_ you insolent fool, _”_ His breath was coming fast and shallow, chest rising and falling rapidly. There was silence, and Yasmin thought for a moment he was going to deny it, before he exclaimed, “of course it’s true. Do you really think your lives matter more to me than a couple trillion credits?” He scoffed, eyes wild and mad. “And if you think I’m going to sacrifice myself before I get my hands on them,” his eyes darkened, “you’re insane.”

“Sir-” started the guard, but the Prince cut him off with a slash of his hand. 

“I don’t want to _hear it!”_ he barked. “You,” he commanded, turning to the Doctor, “you are the one who’s going to reckon with the Yeu.”

“No!” exclaimed Ryan, eyes wide. “She’ll die out there!”

The Prince’s lip curled impassively. “Why should I care?” he retorted, rolling his head languidly. 

“The Doctor’s the best bet you have at survival!” insisted Yasmin, stepping towards the Prince. None of his foot soldiers made any moves to stop her, seemingly frozen. The Prince scowled. 

“Then send her out,” he returned, eyes demanding. “If she really is our ‘best bet.’”

The Doctor’s eyes were calculating, but they were also clouded in agreement. 

“No, Doctor, you can’t be seriously thinking about this,” pleaded Ryan, “don’t go out there, how’re we going to get home?”

The Doctor looked to them regretfully.

“Yaz, Ryan,- I’ll be fine. You both go tell the people what’s going on, and I’ll be back here soon. You won’t be stranded here.” She looked them both in the eyes slowly. “Go.” 

Giving the Doctor one more pleading look, Yasmin ducked around the Prince and the guards, Ryan following close after. She was shaking, both from fear and from the running earlier, but her mind was going too fast for her to really care about how she was feeling physically. Stubborn tears welled up in her eyes, but she tamped them down angrily, swiping them away with a closed fist. The Doctor would be fine. She always was. And she’d just have to trust that. 

* * *

The Doctor gazed at the Prince a moment more, disgusted. “You know what really, truly, repulses me,” she said softly, eyes blazing. “When a man is too much of a coward - no, when a man is willing, even in the slightest, to give up his entire race. His entire planet. His entire people. Without a thought.” She stopped, unable to continue for a moment. “The only time that a planet should _ever_ be given up by a leader is when there is no other choice. When the universe collapses unless something, someone, some people, is completely destroyed or annihilated. When the people are suffering _so much_ that their suffering would be eternal.” Her head was spinning with golden fire and the sunlight catching the spires of Gallifrey at sunset, but she used them to fuel her, an old pain operating as encouragement, eyes sparking. “You _repulse_ me, Your Majesty. Your avarice will be the end of you.” 

The Prince did not reply for a long moment, his eyes eventually narrowing dispassionately. “Then be repulsed,” he responded, “and leave here repulsed, and continue your travels, still repulsed.” He shook his head slowly, lips curling. “But Doctor? Come back in here without a negotiation from the Yeu? And your friends perish, along with this people. And it will be on _your_ shoulders, and your shoulders alone.”

With a soft, amused huff, he waved at her patronizingly. “Be on your way then, good traveller. I shall be seeing you momentarily, I hope.” 

With that, he signalled to his guards, and although they moved as slow as lead and with reluctance in their movements, they shifted to reveal large, glinting spears tucked into their crimson cloaks, an unspoken threat.

The Doctor met the Prince’s gaze evenly before turning to the wall of the enclosure, which opened just enough for her to slip out before slamming shut behind her and sealing into an impenetrable wall once more. 

* * *

“What?” murmured a mother, clutching a deep red child draped in blue and red satin to her chest. “You’re lying to us, you’re lying to us- we all know the Prince is malevolent, but he wouldn’t,” she breathed deeply, her voice ending in a whisper, “he wouldn’t destroy us…?” her statement ended as more of a question than a fact, and Yasmin opened her mouth to reply before it was suddenly chaos. The atrium, which had before been filled with soft chatter, laughter, and discussion was suddenly a vortex of anxiety and shouting. “You KNOW he would!” screamed a tall male, above the sudden chaos and din, “YOU KNOW HE WOULD, after what happened to the Princess!” The chatter then increased exponentially, and the child that the mother who had spoken was holding to her chest started screaming and crying at the noise, while her mother looked small and terrified as she held the child closer. 

“JUST SHUT IT!” Ryan yelled, eyes blazing, “He confirmed it!” he yelled, the din subsiding ever so slightly as he shouted at them, hundreds of red faces turning to listen to him. “We were out there by the entrance just now, and he admitted to it! He’d sell all of you for a sixpence without batting an eye, and he’s done it, and no amount of arguing’s going to change it! What you all need to do is get him out of, I don’t know, out of office. That’s why we’re here talking to you, do you think we’d really stir up all this chaos for nothing? He’s out by the door now. He just sent our good friend out to the Yeu to negotiate with them, and if she doesn’t succeed? Then they’re going to hunt everyone down who’s ever even heard of the Prince of Eris, and that doesn’t even start to bode well for you.”

“How’re we supposed to-” started one, 

“What are we supposed to do!” yelled another, “and who are you to tell us what to do anyways! What do you know!”

“We aren’t trying to order you around!” insisted Yasmin, but the noise increased again and drowned her out. 

“Seriously Yaz?” asked Ryan, frustrated, before turning back to the people. “Just-” he started, before raising his voice again to at least reach those Eridians closest to him. “Just get him somewhere secure where he can’t make anymore decisions that endanger you while our friend negotiates!” he exclaimed, and a good portion of the Eridians turned to him and the hall falling quieter again. “I know you’re all scared, and you don’t want to listen to me, and I’m strange and all, but you have to trust me,” he swallowed visibly, glancing at Yasmin out of the corner of his eyes as he finished, “you have to trust me that the Doctor is very, very good at what she does.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! you can find me at lifesitself on tumblr. I love hearing from you!  
> i started a collection of oneshots the other day, and i've decided that for every update I make to this story, i'll make an update there as well, and each one will be dedicated to one of the reviewers on this story. all you have to do is comment !  
> thank you so, so much for your kindness and your kudos and your comments. i love you all and I'll see you soon! can't wait for the episode coming on soon. much love!


	6. Chapter 6

It was a good hour before the door to the safehouse slid open and the Doctor came back in, shutting the door behind her with a swoop of her screwdriver. The Prince stood there still, eyes impassive as he surveyed her. 

“Well then?” he asked, voice imperious. 

“Strange lot, the Yeu,” started the Doctor, rubbing a hand over her hair nervously. “They’re a bit savage, yeah, but I’m sure they’d play a killer hand of poker, if they ever got it in their heads- well- their hive mind, that is-”

“Doctor,” snarled the Prince, eyes furious. “Tell me if you made a deal with the Yeu, or your life is forfeit.”

“Well that’s not very nice, is it,” rebutted the Doctor, fiddling with her sonic for a moment before jerking her chin up so they stared at each other. “I’ve made a deal with the Yeu, but you aren’t gonna like it.”

The Prince sneered, but he shifted his weight from one leg to the other and gestured impatiently for her to continue. “They hate you, you’ve got to understand. They don’t operate like you or me- they don’t have any grey sort of morality- it’s black, or white, and you’ve crossed into black territory,” began the Doctor, face set grimly.

“So what do I _do_ then, Doctor!” exclaimed the Prince, eyes sparking, “Stop babbling and explain to me how _I_ stay alive.” The Doctor’s eyes were hard and repulsed, but she sighed a moment later. “If they get to keep what they’ve harvested, they agree to leave you and your people and your planet alone.” 

The Prince was silent for a moment, before shaking his head. “That is not a potential solution,” he announced. “Have you any idea how much the gas in this planet is worth? When I told you I would be trillions of credits richer, I was, if anything, _underestimating_ the sheer value of this planet’s composition. With that sort of currency, I could do anything. And Doctor?” he grimaced, his eyes cold and unfriendly. “I will not give that up.” 

“Are you hearing me?” exclaimed the Doctor. “You don’t have a choice. You either die or you give them what they want- the Yeu aren’t friendly. They won’t look kindly on you for being ambitious or cunning or deceptive. They will kill you and your planet and _everyone_ on it.” 

“Then let them die,” sneered the Prince, and one of the spears in the hands of the guards behind him clattered to the floor, a metallic clanging echoing after the Prince’s words. “Let them die, and let me die- it would be better than to lose so much.”

The Doctor’s mouth twisted in an ugly way, eyes stormy. “They have given you five hours to decide, and then you have to go inform them of your decision.” She levelled him with a cold gaze. “Make the wise choice.”

The Prince scoffed, eyes fearful but shoulders sharp and arrogant. “I’ll keep your _advice_ in mind, Doctor.” He turned to his guards, the spear of one still lying discarded on the floor. “In the meantime, find me my weapons analyst, as fast as possible, and bring them to me.” 

When none of his guards moved, he kicked the spear towards them. “ _Now!_ ” he roared. Two of the guards bowed shakily and departed, while the rest stayed. Satisfied, he turned back to the Doctor, eyes hateful and cruel. “Now get out of my sight. If I so much as catch a glimpse of you before the five hours are up, there will be severe recompense.”

The Doctor didn’t respond, eyes defiant and unafraid, instead brushing past him and into a run down the corridor behind him towards the atrium, a force set into motion.

“Doctor!” exclaimed Yasmin, and Ryan turned to see the Doctor advancing towards them. When she caught their gazes, she grinned slightly, but it seemed a bit flatter than normal. 

“What’s wrong?” Ryan asked, turning away from the Eridian he had been talking to with an apologetic nod.

“Nothing’s, well, wrong-” started the Doctor, but Yasmin and Ryan pinned her down with their eyes before she relented. “Fine. I’ve just lied to the Prince of Eris about striking a deal with the creatures who he’s hired to kill the planet and his people for credits, and he doesn’t know that in two-ish Earth hours they’ll be purging the rest of the planet for its remaining energy and annihilating everything on it.” 

“So something is wrong, then,” Yasmin deadpanned, the shock bypassing her entirely and then returning and sinking in as a sort of devastating calmness. 

“Well, er, _yes,”_ started the Doctor, “but I have two hours to think of a plan, don’t I?” “Doctor, these people are all going to die unless we think of something,” Ryan insisted. “We need to think of something. These are innocent people. They have lives, and children, and-”

“I know that,” interrupted the Doctor, “really, I promise, I know. And I’m going to do all I can to keep every one of them safe, but I need to _think_ , really think.” 

Yasmin opened her mouth, but Ryan groaned, running a hand across his jaw, and opened his mouth to speak again. “And Graham?” he asked after a moment. 

The Doctor looked at him sharply for a moment, before a grin overtook her face. “Graham. Of course- oh, brilliant!” Her eyes sparked back to life, and she gave a sort of high pitched whoop. “Ryan Sinclair! You are a _genius!”_ She seemed to vibrate in place, and Yasmin gave her a confused and incredulous look. “What is it then, Doctor?” she asked, tugging her sleeves down and shifting in place, letting the Doctor’s manic energy sweep her up. 

“The gas. Oh, Rassilon, it was always the gas- think, _think_!” she exclaimed, eyes sparkling and singularly focussed. “When we first came here, I told you it was impossible for the gas to have gained energy with no clear source- stupid- stupid!” She slammed a hand into her face with a exultant shout, and Yasmin grabbed her wrist, concerned. “What is, Doctor?” she asked loudly, letting go of the Doctor’s arm when it seemed she wasn’t going to slam it into her own face again. 

“The only way the heat and pressure could increase was if it was gaining energy,” expressed the Doctor energetically, “and the only way for it to gain energy was if something was feeding it, or if it was somehow taking in energy of some form-” she gestured to Ryan, “like when you eat. You eat, and you gain energy- hah!” she spun in place, eyes full of wonder. “The Yeu aren’t only angry because the Prince is a backstabbing, awful man, they’re also angry because in the pursuit of this energy, they’ve lost some of their own. Think- the only thing that this planet _could_ be gaining energy from would be the things on it, or in this case, _in it._ The planet is sentient in some way- we saw that, earlier- and it’s trying to defend itself. It _consumed_ some of the Yeu, and so the Yeu are losing their people at the same rate that they are gaining the energy- the faster the Yeu work to harvest energy, the more Yeu are consumed by, well, our friend Chesterton, to make up for that energy.”

Yasmin stared at the Doctor, and Ryan’s mouth was hanging open slightly, but the Doctor gave neither of them any room to comment before drawing a deep breath and continuing again, shoving a hand through her short hair and then shaking it about excitedly in front of her, as if the air in front of her were a large diagram.

“They didn’t have the choice to stop, though, because if they didn’t take the job and continue harvesting energy, they would die out anyways- so it’s- it’s a…” she trailed off, searching for the word, eyes brilliant with elation.

“A catch-22…” Yasmin breathed, as things started to slot into place. Ryan looked lost for words, eyes so wide they threatened to leave his head, mouth agape. He closed it with a snap, and then shook it, disbelieving.

“You mean we could have gotten _eaten,_ then?” he asked incredulously after a moment, and the Doctor shook her head, slowly at first before faster. 

“No, no-” she grinned at him. “Chesterton _knew._ He knew we weren’t out to hurt him- he was defending himself against what _was_ trying to hurt him. He’s very big, and very smart, and very kind. He’s let these people live on his outer shell for thousands of years, not moving or shaping himself in any way that might endanger them or their livelihood.”

“Not to be rude, Doctor,” Ryan started after a moment of stunned silence, “really, it’s interesting, but what’s it have to do with Graham?”

The Doctor nodded, not offended. “If we can explain _to_ Chesterton what’s happening, in full- I’m sure he knows most of it already- then Chesterton might be able to rid the planet of the Yeu by amassing them as energy. If that can happen, then the people will be safe and the Yeu will be dealt with.” She looked at the both of them seriously, silent for a moment as she seemed to contemplate something. “We’ll have to get a message to Graham, then. If we’re lucky, he’s on the Tardis. He’s not in danger if he’s not,” she added, seeing Ryan and Yasmin’s worried looks, “as I’m reliably certain now that Chesterton knows he’s with us, and he wouldn’t harm him. Graham doesn’t exactly exude… well, he’s not exactly menacing, is he?” 

Ryan shrugged in agreement, and Yasmin licked her lips, hope swelling in her stomach. “So Doctor, how are we going to get a message to him, then?” she asked, and Ryan nodded. 

“We can’t exactly go _out_ there,” Ryan agreed, gesturing to the door of the atrium which led back out to the hall. 

“Well,” replied the Doctor, dragging out the ‘L’ with her tongue between her teeth, radiating nervous energy. “We could, I suppose, but I don’t think it would be the _best_ idea-”

“You don’t say,” agreed Ryan under his breath, and Yasmin shot him a look. 

“Instead- does one of you have your phone with you?” 

“Yeah, I think so,” Yasmin responded, fishing her cell out of her pocket and handing it to the Doctor. “Are you going to call him? Only, I’m not sure they have cell service here-” 

The doctor made a disparaging noise. “Not a problem when you’re a Time Lord, Yasmin,” she retorted, twisting her sonic and pointing it at the phone for a few moments until, seemingly satisfied, she pressed several things rapidly and then held it to her ear. 

“I would have a phone if you hadn’t of reprogrammed it,” Ryan grumbled, and Yasmin grinned at him. 

“Can’t very well be mad at her for saving your life, can you though,” she asked, and Ryan shrugged with a conceding smile, rolling his eyes a bit. 

“Aha! Graham, it is you! Absolutely fantastic to hear from you, really, absolutely splendid- yes, we’re fine. Yes, he’s with me-” the Doctor removed the phone from her ear and held it out to Ryan, mouthing ‘Graham’ and seeming not to notice Ryan’s incredulous look at the phone which was somehow working despite not having any service. The Doctor wiggled the phone at him a bit more, and he took it almost reluctantly, though he didn’t seem mad about it. 

“Yeah, this is Ryan,” he started, and was silent for a moment as Graham spoke, before half-grinning, eyes turning content. “Yeah, I’m good, I swear. So’s Yaz, I promise. Speaking of us, though, we’ve got a bit of a favor to ask you.” 

The Doctor rocked back and forth on her heels as Graham seemed to speak for a moment longer, then held out her hand when Ryan opened his mouth to speak again, seeming a bit unsure of where to begin. Yasmin nodded towards Ryan and gestured to the Doctor, and he paused. “Yeah, I’ll just give you to the Doctor, hold on a sec-” he handed the cell over again, and the Doctor looked satisfied, tucking the phone between her jaw and shoulder and starting to speak loudly, gesturing wildly as she spoke. Ryan traded an entertained look with Yasmin. 

“Do you think this will work, then?” asked Yasmin as the Doctor explained their idea to Graham over the phone. 

“I think it’s going to have to, is all,” countered Ryan. His posture was confident but his eyes betrayed his apprehension, and Yasmin pursed her lips, understanding. “Yeah,” she agreed, and the two of them stood in silence for a moment. Around them, the Eridians had calmed down, and many of the adults were gathered together, discussing seriously. Several of the children were playing a sort of jumping game and laughing delightedly, and the mother from earlier was cooing to her child and rocking back and forth, eyes darting ever so often to the group of adults in deep discussion. Others seemed noticeably worried or afraid, while even others slept on the ground or read a book. Two of them were kissing passionately by the wall, and Yasmin let the sight of them all sink into her brain. 

“They really are like us, aren’t they,” she finally said, and Ryan made a noise of agreement. “You think you’re travelling so far away from Earth, but you find yourself everywhere you go, I suppose,” she finished. Ryan was silent for a moment. 

“Does it make you feel small?” he inquired of her after a moment spent observing. Yasmin shifted. 

“In some ways, I suppose. The Doctor lives like this, bouncing from galaxy to galaxy every single day of her life. This is all… ordinary to her.” Yasmin lifted a shoulder, taking a deep breath at the enormity of the statement. “But it makes me feel _big_ , too. We’re all just making sense of the world around us, floating through space, yea?”

Ryan huffed out a laugh. “It’s all so different from what I was expecting- and at the same time I dunno what I was really expecting at all, because what else if not this, then?” he gestured to the room around them. Yasmin nodded. 

“I really do hope this works,” she sighed, and Ryan looked at her. 

“It has to.” he assured her. “The Doctor’s brilliant. Even if it doesn’t all go exactly to plan, she’ll work something out.”

Yasmin quirked her mouth. “Let’s-” “Right then!” exclaimed the Doctor, interrupting them both and handing Yasmin back her phone. “Graham is all set, all ready, all good to go- I need one of you to keep them all in some semblance of calm, and I need one of you to come with me and find out what, exactly, the Prince of Eris was on about when he said he was going to go consult his weapons analyst, because I really think that that’s going to end very, very, very badly.” 

“Weapons analyst?” moaned Ryan. “What’s he planning to do? He’s already signed a death warrant for his whole planet-” 

“Exactly,” agreed the Doctor grimly. “It means he’s really rather up to no good.” 

Yasmin rubbed her forehead. “Right then, I’ll stay here if you want, Doctor. Ryan, you look like you’re about to explode if you don’t get out there and do something. I’ll stay here, alright?”

The Doctor looked at her for a moment and nodded, and Ryan hesitated for a moment before nodding his head as well. “You’ve got this, Yaz.” he encouraged, and Yasmin smiled.

“‘Course I have,” she concurred decisively. “It’s you both that have to worry.” 

Ryan shook his head a bit with a grin, and opened his mouth to say something else before the Doctor interrupted.

“We’ve got an hour and a half left, so we’ve really got to get moving- stay safe, Yaz, come along, Ryan.” 

With that, they disappeared almost immediately into the crowd, and Yasmin thought she caught a glimpse of the Doctor’s distinctive coat around the corner of the exit corridor before it faded from her sight. Shifting, she turned back to the room, adrenaline speeding up her heart as she settled into her duty. 

“You’re not _listening_ to me!” growled the Prince of Eris, slamming a single red hand onto the desk in front of him. Across the table, a short man with a head full of dark red hair flinched, before spreading his shaking fingers in the air in front of him to enlarge a hologram blueprint. 

“Your Majesty- you don’t understand. The likelihood of the weapon firing in such a distinctive way is slim to none. If we set off the bomb, we kill the Yeu, but we die with them. There’s no real alternative here. Is it really so bad that you might lose a few credits-”

“Is it _really_ so _bad_ that you might _lose_ a _few_ credits,” mocked the Prince, voice high and insulting, before it settled into a menacing timbre. “Yes, it really is _that bad_. If I hired you for your counsel, you’d be the weapons counselor. As it is, however, I don’t _care_ about the dangers, and I certainly don’t need any counsel about them. What I _do_ need,” his other hand came down even harder than the first, and he leaned across the table until he was face to face with the weapons analyst, head passing through the hologram of the weapon, “is a weapons _analyst._ Are you prepared to do your job, or shall I throw you out to the Yeu as a preparatory meal?” 

The man paled significantly, shaking his head quickly. “No, your Majesty. Of course, your Majesty. The weapon is nearly prepared for launch, your Majesty.”

“Good,” replied the Prince, leaning back from the man contentedly. “Once this planet is gone, the Yeu will be gone as well. They’re a hive mind, they travel everywhere as a full group, and as such, they won’t be able to come after me once they’re gone.”

“C-Come after you, your Majesty?” stuttered the weapons analyst, shivering through every syllable. 

“You really think I’d let myself be blown up with you imbeciles?” The Prince laughed, a short and unfriendly sound. “I am going to rid myself of this planet and the Yeu, but not before securing myself the materials they’ve harvested, as well as an escape pod.” His lips curled to the side. 

“Your Majesty, the only available escape pod is-” “Designated for my father, I’m aware,” finished the Prince, tone bored. “He’s in a coma, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

“You may not understand, Your Majesty- so long as your father is alive, the pod cannot be used by anyone else. It’s locked and impossible to bypass.” 

The Prince was silent for a moment, before laughing. 

“It’s impossible to bypass, so long as he’s alive,” he rebutted. “So I suppose I’ll just have to take care of that, won’t I?” 

He turned away from the weapons analyst, who was shaking so badly that the hologram, controlled by his fingers, wiggled back and forth uncontrollably. 

“Your Majesty?” came the stammered reply. 

“It is of no matter to you. Go directly to the armory, prepare the weapon promptly, and come directly to me when it is finished. Those are your direct orders.” The Prince turned to give him one last piercing stare before sweeping from the room, leaving the weapons analyst shivering uncontrollably in his seat, a half-sob ripping itself from his throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> midterms are over! means more time for writing. i've written 6k words today, 3k of which are for another story on here. see you all soon! let me know what you think of this chapter and the story so far. much love! find me @lifesitself on tumblr.

**Author's Note:**

> if you look up "screaming fire russia" the first video that pops up (the title is in russian) is what the ground sounds like. also, this will be updated soon. i am but a poor college student. yell at me about this work at lifesitself on tumblr.


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